After first sale, an entrepreneur is born
After first sale, an entrepreneur is born

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By Jim Stafford

Published: February 6, 2008

I have a dream. I've carried it close to my heart for a long time. I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to call my own shots and support myself and my family through my own business ingenuity.

For decades my dream has been more like a fantasy, a few seconds of guilty pleasure as I envision myself serving up premium coffee from behind the bar at my coffee house. Or stocking the shelves of my bookstore with the latest best seller.

Starbucks and Barnes and Noble pretty much squashed those fantasies.

Then a new avenue to entrepreneurship opened with the emergence of eBay and online auctions. I bought a few items on eBay just to see how it all worked. Some trading cards for my kids. A used laptop for myself.

However, the urge to sell something soon overcame me. I looked around the house. My son had bought some vintage comic books at a local garage sale. I made a deal with him. I would give him whatever we earned in our online auction for the comics if he would let me sell a bundle of them.

So, I picked out a dozen Marvel comics, took what I thought was a great digital photo of them spread out on the living room floor and posted them on eBay.

The auction cost me a small listing fee that totaled less than $1.

For the next seven days, I lived on my auction page, checking for bidders and watchers and visitors. The auction drew a few dozen curious browsers, but when it ended not a single bid had been made for what I thought was a comic book treasure.

Of course, there were about 5,000 other comic book auctions going on at the same time as mine, so perhaps it was lost in the shuffle.

All of which leads me to this past weekend. I posted some old software on eBay the previous week and watched and waited.

"You're watching grass grow,” my wife said as I popped open my laptop and took a quick glance at the auction status Saturday afternoon.

This time, the bidders were all over my auction and the price was up to $61.

The grass kept growing. By the time the auction ended at 8:30 Sunday night, the total hit $112, and I was ecstatic. My "business” had made a sale. I was an entrepreneur.

I did a little Super Bowl Shuffle of my own as my wife shook her head. "You are hooked now,” she said.

I'm not hooked, I told her. I'm a businessman. I'm the captain of my own ship.

Now I can't wait for garage sale season. The newspaper classifieds will be full of yard sales that can feed my new online business.

I have a dream.